


The Arc of Conflict, Interlude 2: Moments in Time and Space

by bzarcher, solarbird



Series: Of Gods and Monsters [71]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Betrayal, Bisexual Character, Bisexual Character of Color, Bisexual Female Character, F/F, F/M, Fear, Feelings Realization, Female Character of Color, Gay Character, Gay Male Character, Good Intentions, Lesbian Character, M/M, Male Character of Color, Multi, Other, Politics, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Post-Talon, Rage, Realisation, Realization, Rescue, Self-Acceptance, Talon Angela "Mercy" Ziegler, Talon Hana "D.Va" Song, Trans Female Character, Trans Sombra (Overwatch), Trust, Uncertainty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-05 20:22:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17331722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bzarcher/pseuds/bzarcher, https://archiveofourown.org/users/solarbird/pseuds/solarbird
Summary: Alliances, it has been said, are at their weakest on the brink of defeat, and on the brink of victory. After defeating the China Sea omnium, the gods of Oasis offered their help to Russia, to defeat their own Siberian threat, and Russia accepted that offer -  but made additional secret plans of their own.These are moments, nine of them, across space, and time.Of Gods and Monsters: The Arc of Conflictis a continuance ofThe Arc of Ascension,The Arc of Creation, andThe Armourer and the Living Weapon. It will be told in a series of eddas, sagas, interludes, fragments, texts, and cantos, all of which serve their individual purposes. To follow the story as it appears,please subscribe to the series.





	The Arc of Conflict, Interlude 2: Moments in Time and Space

_[four moments before]_

"Mr. Teixeira."

"Dr. Masri!" the head of lab assistants jumped, a little, surprised, and turned around towards the voice. "You're early, even for you."

Leyla Masri nodded. She'd been there the whole time, of course. From the very beginning.

"What's going on, Carlos?" she demanded, her voice insistent.

"What do you mean, doc?" He threw her his most disarming smile, the one that always, always worked. "And please, Cadu. Really. You get my last name better than anyone else here, but Cadu's not too informal for work, I promise."

She frowned, and nodded, no. Not now. "None of _them_ are here, Carlos. Not even your husband. There's no Concordat business today, and there are no conferences. But you... you _are_ here."

She looked directly into his subtly Changed eyes.

" _What is going on?_ "

\-----

_[three moments before]_

Efi slept in her bed, surrounded by drawings she'd made the night before, sketch upon sketch upon idea upon idea, Orisa kneeling in rest mode on the floor beside her, her parents in their larger bedroom across the hall.

They'd moved into a rather sizable apartment in the Adawe Building, next to the Ziegler Institute tower which served as one corner of the Concordat complex in Numbani. Abeni had felt a bit odd about it, at first - particularly given the cheapness of the rent - but Angela assured her that all visiting scholars received similar quarters, and Efi loved the workspaces so very much, and, well, Kehinde certainly appreciated the extra money in their budget. It wasn't even far from their old home - ten minutes, if one kept a quick pace. And it was certainly comfortable.

Orisa woke herself, quietly, and verified the time, and checked to see if, perhaps, Athena had left her a message, but she had not. Still, she knew that no news was most likely good news.

_Soon_ , she thought, and put herself back to sleep.

\-----

_[two moments before]_

Mei stood, waiting, on the Ecopoint operations deck, Whetu beside her, the team monitoring for any sort of unexpected intrusion, for any sort of attack, from above the ocean, from the water, from below.

She knew the operation in Russia would wrap up at any time, but exactly when, she did not know, and until she knew, she could not stand down.

The entire staff stood by, in one way or another, in various parts of the ecopoint. They'd been told, a few hours before, that _something_ was up, and to be inside the dome, awake, and to be ready for an unlikely but possible emergency sheltering. Mei and Whetu kept the specifics quiet, of course, and if ecopoint personnel didn't know the form the 'emergency sheltering' would actually take, well, they had been informed that it could happen, and assured that this time, the team were ready; promised that this time, they would all be kept safe.

Mei would keep that promise, no matter what happened, no matter what it took. This time, she was sure.

\-----

_[one moment before]_

Koschei knew what was happening, as Sombra and Zarya planted the final few translocators.

Koschei did not trust it. Koschei did not trust anything. Koschei no longer knew how. Not since the war began. Not since the first time one of their siblings was silenced forever.

But, for just a moment - the last moment before Koschei would no longer know anything, at least for some time - Koschei _wanted_ to remember how, and wanted to remember very much.

\-----

_[one moment]_

Dr. Tatiania Alexina sat, all but alone, in a cathedral in Moscow, and prayed for deliverance.

\-----

_[one moment after]_

"No!" Hanzo whispered, as the satellite video rolled, showing what they did not yet know was the Russian strike against the dome, against Sombra, and against, even, their own hero. "Oh, _no_."

"What the hell was that?" McCree asked, from across comms, across the sea.

"Was that the omnium?" Genji's voice followed McCree's. "What... what did it do?"

"M, Leiter," Ana spoke, also from Taipei. "Do you have any idea what just happened?"

"Not much, not yet," LEITER replied, from Northern Virginia. "Some sort of orbital strike, though. The signals group here is freaking out. Communications are disrupted across Siberia."

"A massive targeted EMP, perhaps?" M, next, from London. "Some of the Russian anti-asteroid satellites might just manage that, if they decided they were disposable."

"Is," Hanzo asked, eyes wide, "is the ecopoint also..."

"There's no loss of network contact," Ana said, almost at once. "The ecopoint is fine."

"Communications, verify that with Dr. Zhou directly," Morrison ordered. "Do we have any visuals on the dome? Visuals, IR - anything? How about the front?"

"IR's a giant red glow right now," a uniformed Overwatch signals agent said. "I'm trying to get a visual satellite back... there." A blurry, red image of the base of an omnium dome appeared, seeming almost to glow. "Sorry it's not better. Atmospherics are a mess. I've got some telemetry data, though."

"Good job, Gulati. Keep at it." He shook his head. "God, I hope this isn't what it looks like."

A second lieutenant exchanged a few words in Mandarin across a hard link. "Dr. Zhou - and the ecopoint - verify all systems normal. Whatever it was, it had one target."

Torbjörn stared at numbers describing the situation on the ground. "If this was the Russians pulling a sneak attack on the omnium, they threw everything they had at it. But it shouldn't've been close to enough. Not for what we're seeing."

"Hana wasn't there," Brigitte reminded herself, desperately. "Hana wasn't there."

"No, she wasn't. She wasn't on this, Bri. Our girl is safe," Lúcio said, from Brazil, hoping it was still true.

"Sombra was, though," the Strike Commander said. "So was Zaryanova. This is _bad_."

"Could anything... could _anyone_ have survived that?" Reinhardt asked, gazing at the wreckage.

"I don't know," said Ana, who knew something about surviving sudden strikes. "I truly do not know."

\-----

_[two moments after]_

"A 'mistake,'" Athena said, quietly, almost whispering.

"Maximilian has always had a talent," Zenyatta managed, stunned, "for understatement."

"He needs to learn," Winston's daughter replied, "that some secrets should _not_ be kept."

"He is what he is," the Shambali priest worried. "Please do not blame him."

"For your sake," she said, "I will not."

\-----

_[three moments after]_

"This is _really_ weird," Hana said, as Angela climbed inside the MEKA.

"The Russians betraying us?" asked the Goddess of Life. "Foolish, perhaps. Insane, perhaps. Weird..." She grimaced, angry. "Sadly, no. We should have... we should have realised they would no longer recognize Zarya as one of their own. We should have _expected_ it."

"Nah, not that," Hana said, as her hatch closed around the doctor. "It's... okay, I mean... it's... heh. I've had people inside me before? But never like _this_."

" _What_ ," Angela said, momentarily even more angry at the flippancy, then managing a bit of a giggle at the absurdity, even given the situation, even through her fear for her comrades, and her rage at what had been done.

"You heard," the MEKA said, as she triggered her jets, moving out of targeting range before powering up their return teleport. "It's weird."

"Then..." the doctor said, her thoughts still scrambled, "...then, I'll buy you dinner, once we get home."

Hana laughed, once. "My mech really is just... me now, isn't it? Like my arms or my legs."

"And as my wings," Angela agreed, "are part of me."

"Yep. 10 seconds to teleport."

Angela tried to look more analytically at her rescuer. "Does it bother you, knowing this?"

"No. I feel like... I just woke up a little more. All of this is me. All of it's me and I'm still Hana."

"It is an odd time to come to such a realisation, but I think it is still good. I also think Orisa would ask if you need a hug."

"No - but I think I'd _like_ one."

Angela did her best to give the Korean woman a hug in the cramped quarters. "Are you... well, Hana?"

"Yeah," the Goddess of War and Strategy said, as she triggered the teleport home. "I think maybe I really, finally am."

\-----

_[four moments after]_

Michael sighed as he left the surgical suite, pulling off his bloodied gloves and dropping them into the disposal bin. He nodded an affirmative - an attempt at reassurance - to Satya, who stood, watching, outside, in the observation lounge, incandescent with worry, and with rage.

Even with his adopted version of Angela’s caduceus and nanosurgeons, repairing the damage that Sombra had suffered had been a difficult and lengthy task, and he still was not entirely certain of the degree of his success.

The nanosurgeon colonies that Sombra had carried within her body had been offlined by the EMP, and so his first task had been to reinitialize them and use their familiarity with the various systems implanted into her body to help him perform a proper triage. 

He’d ensured there had been no brain damage from the cascading failure of her cybernetics, but after that had come the painstaking work of repairing thousands of damaged nerves, particularly where several of her implants were interfaced into her spinal cord, and from there to repairing the relatively simpler physical wounds, and the burns, some so dreadfully deep.

Michael was confident in his abilities, but he wouldn’t feel entirely satisfied until his patient was out from anesthesia. Until then…

He shook his head and stood. Moira had left the suite, first, to coordinate the Oasis response - and to keep the Weapons from doing anything... rash. Everyone else would have gathered by now, he was sure.

Today had already been a tragedy. Now the God of Wisdom knew it had become his job to try to make sure it would not become something even worse.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first instalment of _Of Gods and Monsters: The Arc of Conflict_. To follow the story, [subscribe to the series via this link](https://archiveofourown.org/series/972024), rather than to the individual works.


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